Getting tough with immigration

October 22, 2001|By Dennis Byrne. Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant.

When someone slips into America to kill thousands of people, ruin the lives of thousands more loved ones, destroy uncounted millions in property and business and send an entire nation into a depression, should we:

A. Seal the borders and not let anyone in.

B. Throw open the borders and let everyone in.

C. None of the above.

Obviously "C" is the correct answer. We can't seal ourselves off from the world. Nor should we not increase our vigilance, to repel those who do us harm.

No one I know is arguing that we should seal ourselves up, but listen to the media enough and you get the idea that many folks are upset at what we are doing, or should do, at the borders to protect ourselves.

We keep hearing reports about 700 poor souls who have been detained, and how we're depriving them of their "rights," and who are we to stop them from entering this country, and we ought to stop this sort of "racial profiling." You've got to wonder at media that regard the clear and present danger to our safety and our democracy posed by people coming here illegally or with evil intent as not that much of a story.

A good example was CNN's airing last week of a sympathetic account of someone who had been detained and complained that he had been "treated like a criminal." At its completion, CNN "prime" anchor Judy Woodruff vocalized a "hmmm," which I take was not a comment on the unbalanced and low journalistic quality of the report. It is amazing and sad how easily the media can be manipulated (a lawyer brings in a client who has a self-serving whine and the media outlet airs the story without question), especially when the story falls along the lines of the media's sympathies.

Look, if all the Sept. 11 hijackers had all been Swedes, then wouldn't it make sense to include in the profile of suspicious people blue-eyed blonds who have links to a Viking terrorist organization back home? The truth is that our borders are sieves, no barrier at all to the comings and goings of people who incinerate us, poison us or do who-knows-what mischief yet to come. Anyone who does not consider this the Big Story does not practice journalism. Obviously, the public is smart enough to recognize it. A Zogby poll revealed strong public support, across all demographic groups, for significant changes in immigration policies. Three out of four likely voters, including conservatives, moderates and liberals, said the government was not doing enough to control the borders and screen those allowed into the country. By about the same margin, likely voters called for dramatic increases in resources devoted to border control and enforcement of immigration laws.

But how much attention goes to lawmakers who want to extend a provision of the 1996 immigration law that would allow an illegal immigrant to simply marry a citizen, pay $1,000 and remain here without any background checks.

Indeed, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service confirms that it has a backlog of 300,000 cases of foreigners who have been ordered out of the country, but who have disappeared before they could be deported.

The granting of visas to the U.S. has become a sloppy procedure by undermanned American embassies and consulates. We need the kind of legislation proposed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) that would, among other things, create a joint database that can be used by U.S. agencies domestically and overseas to keep track of illegal immigrants in this country.

It also would restore a provision eliminated in 1990 allowing illegal immigrants to be excluded based on the belief that they would engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or security of the United States, such as terrorism. Can you imagine that illegal immigrants now cannot be excluded on such grounds?

As for weeping over the rights of those who are detained, the Constitution reads: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety requires it."

That applies to citizens as well as illegal immigrants. What we are popularly calling a "war" is in the most literal sense an "invasion." It's time for the media and some Americans to get used to the idea.